Thomas Loring &Co. Donald Armour

Donald Armour

Swept & Garnished

A 1938 novella of possession and exorcism

Originally published by the short-lived firm of Laidlaw in England in 1938, this rare novella of supernatural horror, unknown to bibliographers and unheralded by critics, took us by surprise. Its compulsive readability and shockingly horrific scenes struck us as most unusual for its period -- and impressive for any period. It was the author's first book -- and next to last. So Fast He Ran, a dark timeslip fantasy, appeared in 1940 under the more prestigious imprint of Chapman and Hall. Then silence. Based on the evidence of these two books, Armour should have gone on to a sterling literary career. But he tried to get these works reprinted after the war (he had served in Burma) and was told by publishers that times and tastes had changed. Armour became an advertising executive and quit writing, much to the loss of posterity.

Swept & Garnished is the story of two priests in a small English town: an Anglican vicar, confident and good-looking, with a prosperous, beautiful old church; and an unglamorous Catholic priest with a parish on the other side of the tracks. The novella's first scene, like an overture, encapsulates the whole drama. The vicar is strolling downhill, the priest trudging uphill, each one nervous about meeting the other at the stile and trading small talk. The symbolism of the image is two-fold. The vicar's journey is easy because it marks a descent. His fall will take him into blasphemies and atrocities that would be strong meat for a horror novel of today, let alone 1938. The parish priest struggles -- because his path marks an ascent -- and he will rise to the occasion as the only person who can exorcise the devil who will have taken possession of the vicar's soul and spread a miasma over the village.

This story packs more weird atmosphere and incident into its 24,000 words than most novels three times the length; the thrills grow, one out of the other, in a perfectly organic manner, each one topping the last. The religious theme of the book makes it natural to compare it with the theological thrillers of the 1930s by Graham Greene and Charles Williams. But Armour’s stance strikes one as both more subtle and more brisk that their’s. He has a transparent style that wastes no words and draws no attention to itself yet never feels skimpy or skeletal. Swept & Garnished has a touch of that patina that we find in books from another period, but underneath that it delivers the goods, and it will satisfy the cravings of the most jaded literary thrill seeker of today -- in addition to giving him food for thought long after the book is closed.

PLANNED CONTENTS:

· unabridged reprint of original edition of 1938

· critical introduction